Effects of future land-use transitions triggered by local social conflict on global biodiversity hotspots

Identifying and investigating global land-use changes triggered by unforeseen events are critically important for sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation within the global socioecological framework. In this study, we developed a framework to project and validate land-use changes resulting from the agricultural expansion driven by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Our results revealed that the Russia-Ukraine conflict likely triggered an additional potential demand for 6.28-6.78 million hectares of cropland in 198 countries and regions. The subsequent agricultural expansion was projected to drive a loss of 8.72-8.81 million hectares of forests (approximately 0.28% of global forests) and additional forest fragmentation during forest-to-cropland conversion, primarily for broadleaf evergreen trees in tropical regions and needleleaf evergreen trees in temperate and boreal regions. However, the forest loss trend was projected to be significantly higher in biodiversity hotspots (0.51-0.91%), where fragmentation will be particularly pronounced for broadleaf deciduous trees and shrubs in temperate areas. When the simulation results were overlaid with the actual cropland data, 59.17-69.36% of the simulated cropland pixels had already been converted to cropland, highlighting the effectiveness and reliability of the simulation results. Our findings highlight the critical importance of taking proactive measures to mitigate the telecoupled consequences of land-use changes that are caused by regional sociopolitical disturbances on forest degradation and natural land fragmentation, especially in biodiversity hotspots. Furthermore, our findings suggest that progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 15, Life on Land, requires moving beyond site-based conservation to recognize habitat security as being shaped by interconnected food trade systems and geopolitical relations.